Friday, November 20, 2009

We’ve been working for the National Fenestration Rating Council (think windows) for more than a decade. Recently, they asked us to find a way to inform members who can’t attend their meetings about what goes on there.

Our solution? A “live meeting update” in the form of a blog. We call it NFRC News Now, and we produce it live from the meeting site in real time. Just minutes after a committee wraps up its work, we post a summary on the blog for everyone to review.

We’re just back from NFRC’s fall meeting in San Antonio, where the blog really came into its own. We had close to 500 visits from 14 countries, some as far away as Australia and South Africa. At one point, we surveyed the room and close to half the attendees had the blog up on their laptops, even as they participated in the actual meeting! And here’s the best part: the fenestration trade media now cover the meetings from the blog.

Member relations and media outreach wrapped into one, through the magic of social media. It’s a solution that every trade association and professional society should consider.